The Stress Doc sheds light on higher purpose, motivational humor as a
creative, stress-reducing tool for these highly charged times. Case vignettes
illustrate humor’s potential for enhancing task and supportive capacities of a
work team while helping the organization as a whole practice in-house "R & R" –
recreation and rejuvenation.

Humor and the Work Team:

Healing, Harmonizing, and Harnessing Morale and Productivity

By Mark Gorkin, LICSW
The Stress Doc" ™

In our globalized, 24/7, relentlessly upgrading and unpredictably downsizing
(or reorganizing) bottom-line corporate world, it's no surprise that
individuals, teams, divisions, and even entire companies can become "stress
carriers" or high stress environments. A critical challenge for the
organization is helping personnel, and especially the foundational task and
support system – the work team – maintain both productivity and morale in these
"do more with less" times. How can the HR professional and all levels of
management help: (a) fight the "burnout blues," (b) prevent a "lean-and-MEAN"
attitude from becoming the department or company mantra, and (c) disarm an "us
against them" environment that invariably breeds hostile competition or in-house
territoriality?

Tough issues for sure…still, have no fear (well, maybe a little) the "Stress
Doc" is here to champion an underutilized conflict-resolving and
performance-enhancing intervention tool. So what is this magical and
methodical instrument for preventing your company's "esprit de corps" from
turning into an "esprit de corpse?" It's deceptively simple:
HUMOR!

Humor Clarified and Defined

However, this humor, what I call "motivational humor," is a lot more than just a
good joke starting off a team or staff meeting. It's not having a humor
day, where management puts on clown noses or wigs. Nor is it firing loud
sounding toy guns to act out "playfully" disagreement or to distract momentarily
during a tense problem-solving meeting. While all these actions may
temporarily lighten a work atmosphere, I'm interested in more imaginative and
involving interventions that truly arise from live issues and conflicts, while
they are occurring. And this instrumental humor should have both short run
and, potentially, ongoing impact. Motivational humor is:
(1) healing – releases frustration and opens up communication channels within
and among work teams
(2) harmonizing – busts those trust barriers between "superiors" and
"subordinates"
(3) harnessing – generates energy, creativity, and coordination or team synergy
both short run and ongoing.

To better understand this action concept, lets capture its semantic foundation.
According to The Random House Dictionary, "humor (is) the recognition and
expression of the incongruities and peculiarities in a situation or conduct."
A capacity for humor, especially positive motivational humor, often reveals an
ability to appreciate and play with life's absurdities; to poke good-natured
(and sometimes a bit more pointed) fun at others and, especially, to laugh at
our own flaws and foibles. In fact, for the pioneer of psychoanalysis,
Sigmund Freud, humor is the highest psychological defense mechanism. Such
mature humor and the capacity for self-effacing laughter, reflects the
encouragement of our efforts and a patient tolerance of our "so-called"
failures.

Let's keep pushing the humor envelope: research has even linked humor to
innovative problem-solving. One study revealed that people who had just
watched a short comedy film of television "bloopers" were better able to find a
creative solution to a puzzling problem than were people who had watched a film
about math (zzzzz!) or people who had exercised. Humor seems to stimulate
the right side of our brain allowing us to think more broadly, to forge
exaggerated and surprising possibilities, and to see complex and otherwise
elusive relationships.

Four Functions of Humor

Humor also has four basic functions, which I've captured in an acronym.
Humor is good for what AILS you:

A = Arousal. Hearty laughter provides dopamine-like stimulation when
bored and endorphin-induced relaxation when tense. This laughter has been
likened to a big vibrator that gives your vital organs a brief but vibrant
internal massage.

I = Incongruity. As mentioned, humor allows us to go beyond rigid
"black or white" and "all or none" thinking; it enables us to generate
imaginative and even paradoxical possibilities (such as my self-described
professional label of "Psychohumorist" ™). Humor that plays with the
inconsistent, unexpected, and contradictory helps us think and laugh "out of the
box."

L = Liberation. Humor often facilitates the discussion of a variety of
subjects that may be taboo or off limits, for example, sex, religion, or
politics. Speaking the unspeakable is now possible. And, just as
important, people are more open to a serious message when it's gift-wrapped with
humor.

S = Superiority. Humor is a potent vehicle for bringing down to earth
inflated egos and arrogant individuals. (Think of Will Rogers or political
cartoons.) Humor and the ensuing laughter may also provide the productive
release of frustration and anger. However, I must raise a cautionary red
flag: depending on a person's motives, humor can have a decidedly hostile
edge. Too often an individual or group uses humor as a weapon of attack or
to elevate one's own self-esteem or status at the expense of another party.

A paradoxical thing is that in making comedy, the tragic is precisely that
which

arouses the funny…we have to laugh due to our helplessness in the face of

natural forces and (in order) not to go crazy.

Four Case Examples

With these basic functions and words of wisdom in mind, let me illustrate the
purposes and dramatic consequences of the healing, harmonizing, and harnessing
power of motivational humor. The following four morale-ity tales demonstrate how
this mirthful and memorable intervention technique relaxes, reenergizes and
rejuvenates team performance. And, hopefully, you'll also discover how humor
theory and practice come together and play.

A. Reversing Departmental Resistance to Change (or "Thinking Out of the
Coffin")

Here's a vignette showing how a federal agency department on the toxic
passive-aggressive "resistant to change" path managed to rise from the ashes of
an organizational pyre. Actually, with some imaginative intervention,
management and employees together moved way "out of the burnout battlefront
box."

Years ago, in my role as an OD/team building consultant, a department manager
was lamenting to me that her staff seemed to be fighting the computer automation
of record keeping. The tip of the iceberg was group resistance to a new
administrative form. When this form would run out, employees would return
to the old standard. Verbal exhortation and a stream of memos had not
stemmed the countervailing tide. And like a stormy tide, a tense
undercurrent was gathering strength.

After a period of uneasy workplace assessment, in a brainstorming session with
the manager, it was clear that employee input on form design, especially among
those directly effected, had not been solicited. Further discussion
confirmed my suspicion that group resistance and worker slowdown had as much to
do with management’s top-heavy implementation as with employee trepidation.
Folks were chafing under a sense of loss and feeling like manipulated pawns, if
not like children who should be seen (following orders) and not heard.

One day, an idea popped up when I realized staff's behavior was more than
passive-aggressive defiance. Employees were grappling with the loss of
control in decision-making, a loss of familiar processing procedures and a
looming, uncertain operational future. Some loss of face, a feeling of
being devalued, should also be thrown into this critical mix. This charged
ambience heightened the connection between loss and grief and readiness for
comic relief. My message to management: "While you may have missed
the boat on the front end, there's opportunity on the back side. Why not
plan a 'forms funeral'?"

While this was perhaps absurd, we went ahead anyway. The frustrated
employees wrote serious and playful eulogies to the old form (and the former
data-processing system) while raising both negatives and positives (or, at least
hopes for adaptations) regarding the new.

Strategic Points. By putting the drama on stage, people could enact their
frustration purposefully instead of acting it out passive-aggressively. (While
the superiority function of humor was on display through some deserved jibes,
the energy and intent stayed within appropriate bounds of expression.)
Humor and drama became a problem-solving bridge for healing and harmonizing
action (collective grief). By allowing employees to openly raise their voices
for performance-related input in an aggressive and playful fashion, management
started "getting it." Communal catharsis significantly assuaged past hurts and
strengthened group morale. Our imaginative theater of the absurd also
helped this department bury unilateral decision-making (and that "esprit de
corpse") while resurrecting trust, productivity levels, and team cooperation.

B. Disrupting Escalating Group Tension When Consensus Is Critical

An adept practitioner of motivational humor doesn’t just playfully nip the
hand that feeds him or her; the interventional skill and art often begins at
home, that is, being able to poke fun at his or her own flaws and foibles. Of
course, this humor maneuver may be double-barreled – it takes real ego-strength
to be both self-effacing and self-affirming. For example, as I’ve middle-aged, I
occasionally take jibes about my hair loss, I firmly remind the moprakers "You
should have more respect for my hair. It was recently placed on the World
Wildlife Federation’s endangered species list!" And for stress workshop
attendees indulging in hirsute harangues there’s this reminder: "Most of you
should be grateful that you can have a bad hair day!"

Little did I know that such a playful yet feisty attitude would one day
metamorphose into a truly powerful response under the pressure of a highly
charged task group setting – a racially divided jury. Employing humor to resolve
contemporary cultural conflict is dicey. Nonetheless, by carefully exploring the
higher power of self-effacing humor, you just may discover a small "pass in the
multicultural impasse." Let me illustrate. Several years back, I was on
jury duty in Washington, D.C. An African-American male in his early 20s was
accused of selling cocaine to an undercover African-American policeman. Our jury
consisted of nine African-Americans and three Caucasians. Tension was building
as we deliberated upon the case. In particular, a number of the African-American
jurors believed that the police had mishandled a piece of the evidence. (To me,
this piece of evidence did not appear critical in establishing the fact of the
alleged sale.)

Based on the increasingly pointed and heated discussion, it was clear that
most of the African-Americans were leaning toward acquittal. I and two other
white jurors along with a middle-aged African-American male were leaning in the
opposite direction. After an informal poll and more frustratingly fruitless
attempts to influence each other’s position, a middle-aged African-American
woman next to me cried out, "Well, it seems that the white folks and this one
black guy are holding us up." Suddenly, the black male juror jumped up and
stared hard at his accuser, the implied accusation being that he’s just going
along with "whitey." Then he challenged her in an agitated, increasingly loud
voice: "What are you trying to say? Just what are you trying to say?" The room
crackled with tension. The African-American forewoman seemed paralyzed.

Now on my other side, a young African-American woman, with long, full braids
(not all natural, I suspect) anxiously blurted out, "This is ridiculous. All
we’re doing is pulling our hair out." The electricity and anguish now jolts me
into action. I fairly shout, both at my neighbor and the others, "Hey, that’s
not fair. You have a lot more hair than I do." There’s a startled pause...then
the room erupts with sustained laughter. The forewoman eventually said, "Guess
we needed that. Now let’s get back to the facts of the case." And we did, in a
respectful and more tolerant manner. While we ended as a hung jury (six to six,
by the way) we didn’t finish as a racially hung up one.

Strategic Points. Based on the arousal function of humor, escalating
tension is ripe for humor intervention. And when the tension is driven by
cultural concerns, if used carefully, humor can play a powerful healing and
harmonizing role by liberating us from stereotypes; its universality transcends
diversity and, on occasion, even racial taboos. A self-effacing humor
intervention that absurdly pokes fun at one’s own flaws and foibles may just
sneak under that too sensitive "political correctness" radar and allow the
warring parties a stress-relieving and tolerance-boosting laugh. And the group
can productively return to the task at hand…status quo ante bellum.

C. Defusing Tension in a System-Wide Hazardous Condition

The third scenario comes from a State Department Manager stationed at the
American Embassy in Kuwait in 1990 as war clouds were gathering in darkness and
intensity. Not surprisingly, war-zone tension began to invade in-house. Being
restricted to the compound was exacerbating stress levels; interpersonal sniping
was on the rise and generating numbers of working wounded. The Ambassador
decided to intervene before the internal grumbling and overt grousing eroded
psychological coping capacity and organizational morale. He told his
second-in-command to inform personnel that the next day was a holiday and that
all embassy staff would be going to the beach.

His deputy, incredulous, protested: "Sir, a war could break out any moment.
It’s not safe to leave the compound!" The Ambassador, nevertheless, reaffirmed
his desire to have people ready to go to the beach the next morning.

Bright and early the next day the Ambassador descended the stairs in bathing
trunks and robe while carrying a blowup rubber ducky. Most personnel were not
similarly attired. "Ye of little faith," declared the Ambassador and proceeded
to march everyone outside. And lo and behold, during the night, somehow, this
Ambassador had managed to have tons of sand trucked in and dumped in the
compound. And staff had a tension-relieving, fun-filled day at the beach. The
in-house stress siege was broken; the embassy personnel regrouped their
individual and group resources and professionally weathered the war storm.

Strategic Points. Defying conventions or rules, whether in relation to an
external enemy or, when critical, even regarding departmental procedures is a
key weapon in the motivational humorist’s bag of tricks. When an authority
figure is both brave and playfully absurd in the face of threat or bureaucratic
rigidity, the role-modeling and morale-building effect is contagious. (This
scenario surely illustrates the incongruous function of humor.) Add some visual
props and others can come out of their battle shell and play. And team
rejuvenation, not just tension relief, may be your final reward.

D. The Most Popular Stress Doc Intervention

In my Practice Safe Stress: Managing Stress and Conflict & Building Team
Morale and Cooperation through Humor Program, the critical intervention is a
"discussion and drawing" exercise. This "D & D" works with teams or departments
of twenty or at a conference keynote of two hundred or more. The premise is
simple: working (and soon to be playing) in small groups, I first ask the
members to "Identify sources of stress and conflict in your everyday workplace
operations." Try having diverse people (gender, race, rank, etc.) or different
department personnel working together. Folks are assured that this isn’t "true
confessions." People are to share only at a level that feels comfortable.

Then I lay down the real challenge: after ten minutes of discussion, the team
must generate a group picture or composite of the individual stress scenarios.
Now I tell the tale of a group that drew a burnt out CEO who had morphed into a
menacing creature – a "troublesaurus" – along with fearful employees on the run.
(Large flip chart paper and a colorful variety of markers are provided.) The
drawing segment is also limited to ten-minutes. In both segments, I give
periodic time-limit reminders. This invariably heightens arousal level and task
focus.

The evolution of shared energy in the room is remarkable. From tentative
small group discussion to more open, relaxed sharing; from hovering at the edge
of the paper (like a reluctant diver on a high board) to a group now frolicking
in a pool of images and colors of their own making. (I remind participants that
stick figures are fine: "I myself am a graduate from the Institute for the
Graphically-Impaired.") The decibel level of laughter is ever increasing as the
images take exaggerated and symbolic shape and direction. Believe me, I’ve seen
it all: sinking ships, stalking dinosaurs, exploding castles, consuming black
holes, chained bodies, a devil of a boss (who no longer seems quite so scary
with outlandish ears and tail), etc. The exercise truly harnesses the group’s
aggressive energy transforming it into collaborative and creative output. And
all four functions of humor – arousal, incongruity, liberation, and superiority
– definitely come out to play.

With a small group we do a "show-guess-and-tell" whereby the teams proudly
display their colorful composites. The sharing and large group response becomes
a supportive ("I/we are not alone") and playfully aggressive catharsis.

With groups over fifty or sixty people, the room is turned into an art
gallery. People meander about, eyeing and laughing (laughing "with" more than
"at") upon encountering their colleagues’ imaginative images. A handful of
drawings are selected or volunteered for generating the above group sharing and
catharsis.

Strategic Points. Akin to the previous illustrated forms funeral, this
exercise creates a safe atmosphere for eliciting some of the real workplace
feelings and frustrations. At the same time, the experience is way more than a
gripe session; it’s an opportunity to experience empathy for other group members
or for other work teams and departments. People get the broader organizational
picture, for example, all departments are feeling real pressure. I also think
the exercise sends another vital message: management understands that in today’s
pressure-packed workplace you better let folks occasionally blow off steam. The
interventional key: legitimate the process and harness the energy.

For many there’s stress relief just from realizing you are not alone; for
some there are the real beginnings of a healing process. And if structured
venting occurs in an atmosphere of laughing and having fun, of high group energy
and creativity, with a sense of bonding as a team while producing a tangible
product in a defined period of time…then everybody wins. This playfully
cathartic, trust-building experience, in fact, frequently lays the groundwork
for further issue problem-solving, conflict resolution, and follow-up team
building programs.

Closing Statement

Hopefully, I’ve made a powerful case for the purposeful and spontaneous use
of humor in the workplace and with work teams. Healing, harmonizing, and
harnessing humor have an energizing, disarming, and positively motivating
impact. As psychiatrist Ernst Kris cogently observed: "What was once feared and
is now mastered is laughed at." And perhaps equally important is the Stress
Doc’s inversion: "What was once feared and is now laughed at is no longer a
master." So if you want to overcome divisiveness within and between teams or
between employees and managers, to increase safe and open communication, and
also encourage meaningful if not creative problem-solving while generating a
communal and productive atmosphere…seek the higher power of motivational humor:
May the Farce Be with You!

Mark Gorkin, LICSW, "The Stress Doc" ™, a psychotherapist, an
international/Celebrity Cruise Lines speaker, and training/OD consultant for a
myriad of corporations and government agencies. The Doc is a syndicated writer
and the author of Practice Safe Stress: Healing and Laughing in the Face of
Stress, Burnout & Depression. In 2003, Mark received the inaugural National
Association of Social Workers-Metro-DC Chapter’s Social Work Entrepreneur Award.
The Doc is also America Online’s "Online Psychohumorist" ™ running his weekly
"Shrink Rap and Group Chat" on AOL/Digital City. See his award winning, USA
Today Online "HotSite" -- www.stressdoc.com (recently cited as a
workplace resource by National Public Radio (NPR). Email for his monthly
newsletter showcased on List-a-Day.com. Mark is an advisor to The Bright Side ™
-- www.the-bright-side.org -- a multi-award winning mental health
resource. For more info on the Doc’s speaking and training programs and
products, email stressdoc@aol.com or call 202-232-8662.